Tag Archives: apple

blekko

Of Interest

New Blekko Search Misses the Point

Drew Hannush by Drew Hannush (2 Nov 2010)  |  Leave a comment

In a world of seemingly endless start-ups, it is very difficult for any new product or service to gain the massive amount of front-end momentum and market share it needs to grow because of the deluge of competition.

New technologies have similar problems to the ones being faced by network television.  In the old days, you had a captive audience.  For the most part, you had ABC, NBC, CBS, maybe an independent channel and PBS as your only sources for entertainment on the tube.  It was very easy for these networks to battle it out and make an impression because they owned about 20% of the entire television viewing experience.  But now, with a myriad of cable networks, they own only partial percentage points and their impact has dwindled tremendously (as well as the quality of their writing pool).

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Case Studies

Steve Jobs and Me: The World’s Worst iMac

Drew Hannush by Drew Hannush (30 Jul 2010)  |  13 Comments

Okay, those of you that know me know that I complain endlessly about my iMac’s issues.  I think Marley has some competition for the world’s worst dog (if only my iMac lasted in dog years).

So, I saw Steve Jobs telling people that with the iPhone 4 problems…they were looking to make sure every customer was happy.   Well, that’s quite a boast.  So after I had given my iMac up for dead…I decided to write him a letter to tell him of the extraordinary journey my Mac went on.

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Of Interest

Recession Hits Apple

Drew Hannush by Drew Hannush (17 Mar 2009)  |  1 Comment

Not a surprise that when the rubber hits the road, American consumers will choose competitively priced substance over style.  The latest sales figures show Apple losing ground to PC’s.

For years Mac’s have had an air of superiority over PC’s.  This was due to many factors, including the IBM chipset that clocked well against a PC, a more user friendly operating system, a more stable operating system, and subtle advertising (watch almost any Hollywood movie and you will see a fantasy world where everyone owns a Mac).

Today, Mac’s still lead in style, but the substance has dwindled away.  While there are some nice gadgets on new Mac’s (swapping out hardware is quite easy) and they still feature the most trendy designs, they no longer can be differentiated from a PC in terms of the chipset that they use (now Intel), the issues they have (my iMac competes with Windows ME for crashing), and the support they have (last time I took my Mac to my local service department, the salesman was telling me how overrated Macs were and I went home without getting my noisy fan problem resolved because the technicians weren’t up to getting it fixed).

PC’s have the advantage of a wider range of software, a lower cost, a wider range of designs (HP makes some really nice looking laptops), hardware that is available from multiple discount vendors…not proprietary like Apple’s, and a stable operating system (if you run your computer with Firefox instead of IE7 and enough RAM, you’ll find Vista is a very smooth running operating system).

So, if you can buy a really good PC for $800 and a comparable Mac for $1400, which way are you going to go?  I think the American people are speaking.  All the glossy false advertising in the world (some of the claims by Mac in those commercials were skirting the edge of the truth quite a bit) didn’t pump the charm up enough to convince people to overspend on a marginally superior product.

It will be interesting to see if Apple continues to advertise hot and heavy for their computers or if they will continue to focus on their iPhone and iPod products.  In the end, Apple will probably best survive this recession by continuing to innovate and lead in the early stages of products like the iPhone and iPod.  When they offer it and there aren’t many alternatives, they win.  But as they are probably finding out with the Mac and possibly the iPod…as competition comes into the market, the American consumer will go with substance and price over style.

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Of Interest

The Myth of the Mac

Drew Hannush by Drew Hannush (16 Feb 2009)  |  Leave a comment

Okay, today I heard the craziest statement I have heard in a while.  Apparently the guy I work with went to a computer store the other day and overheard someone say “the Mac is the greatest computer ever made” or something to that extent.

Okay, drop the kool-aid Jimmy, step away from the crack.

As a very disappointed Mac user myself, I have to say…the $1,700 I spent on my iMac never paid off.  Luckily I bought the 3 year warranty, because my iMac seemed to long for the shop, like it was Club Med or something.  The hard drive went bad, the DVD rom went bad, the memory went bad and the fan whines like a Cessna…and these were only problems within the first three months.

I bought Dreamweaver and Microsoft Office for it.  Dreamweaver was all messed up.  I had to upload everything file by file or it crashed.  When I use the file manager (called Finder in Mac) when I would update an image with Photoshop, the Finder would crash. Forget Excel, it usually crashed after every 5 rows.  The thing locks up continuously.  The fan gets so loud, my daughter down the hall complains that I need to turn it down because she can’t sleep with the racket.

Oh, but the Mac is a superior piece of equipment!

Yeah, maybe in 1993.  But now it is built on the same chip PC’s use.  It doesn’t have any more power that I can tell.  You have to buy all new software for it (forget the minor inconvenience that Vista might have in making you upgrade some of your software).

I don’t think Macs are all bad…and I know I bought a lemon and that others have had more success with theirs.  But if my wife’s iPod is any indication (a year old and already turning to garbage)…Mac makes fancy junk that is as unpredictable as any PC…people just love to buy the myth.

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